Just as President Trump has recently doubled down on his attempt to sow doubt about and create chaos surrounding the upcoming election, Republicans in Harrisburg are proposing to create a select committee that looks like it would essentially have the same purpose.

The preamble of the House resolution calls into question the good faith efforts of the administration, county officials and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to carry out the election process fairly in this difficult time. And that suggests the true purposes of the resolution is to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election results in Pennsylvania and thereby interfere with the election

Use this tool to send a letter to your member of House demanding that they oppose HR 1032 or amend it to create a genuinely bipartisan committee designed to create not undermine fair elections in Pennsylvania.

Here are the details:

At best, the select committee  is an attempt to further President Trump’s effort to undermine the legitimacy of the election in the eyes of the people and to use confusion as a way of discouraging people to vote by mail or from voting at all. Trump knows, and it appears that Pennsylvania Republicans agree, that doubt, chaos, and confusion drive down voting. And, recent polls tell us that the only way for them to win in 2020 is by suppressing the vote.  

At worst, this committee’s goal is to prepare the way for unprecedented, unconstitutional, and profoundly dangerous steps that the General Assembly or Republican-controlled courts might take to set aside the votes of the people in choosing Pennsylvania’s presidential electors.

In any normal year, that mere thought would seem absurd. That the proposal to create this committee comes a week after a Republican party official raised the possibility of just such an action in an article in The Atlantic, and Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman refused to rule it out, lends credence to our concerns.

The select committee proposed by the House Republicans would have practically unlimited funding and subpoena power as well as no time limit for its actions. It could start calling state and county election officials in for questioning now, disrupting their efforts to prepare for the election—or after the election, undermining their effort to count votes. It could hold public hearings right now that would raise doubts about the process of voting—or after the election, raising doubts about the fairness of counting votes. It could presumably subpoena ballots submitted by voters and possibly insert itself into the long standing nonpartisan and court-guided process of determining which votes are legitimate and which are not.

These actions would create exactly the kind of chaos, confusion, and doubt we fear. And they would also create a distraction from a terrible record in protecting us from both COVID-19 and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Use this tool to send a letter to your member of the Pennsylvania House asking him or her to vote not on HR 1032 or, at minimum limit the scope of the committee and ensure that its work is carried out in a bipartisan way by adopting the amendments that:

• Limit the committee to reviewing the electoral process after Pennsylvania’s electors are chosen on December 14.
• Create a six-member committee with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. Commission and require a a two-thirds majority of the members of the committee to take action or issue a report.